“A Man’s Man’s Man’s World”

Music, Misery and Masculinity in the Work of Nick Hornby

Lisa Walraven

Student Number: 1271555

Master Thesis

Media Studies: Cultural Analysis

Supervisor: Frans Willem Korsten

Second Reader: Liesbeth Minnaard

Universiteit Leiden

December 2018

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Table of Contents

Introduction 2

Chapter One: The Changes in Masculinity 3

Chapter Two: Saving Masculinity by Swapping Real Capital for Cultural Capital 9

Chapter Three: Saving Masculinity by Fabricating Female Support 29

Chapter Four: The Fear of Change and the Play with Focalisation 46

Works Cited 48

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Introduction

Masculinity is one of the most important topics in modern public debate. The third and fourth waves of feminism, which were both focused on diversity and individualism and have brought about many changes, have led to various debates about what it means to be a real man. In the current era of

MeToo, the Men’s rights movement and the popularity of ‘strongman leaders’ such as Jair Bolsonaro,

Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, the topic of masculinity is more relevant than ever.

Opinions about who is and who is not a real man vary enormously. Some people support the traditional ideal of a man who is the breadwinner of the family, always stays strong and firmly distances himself from any behaviour or interests that are generally considered feminine. Others claim that a real man is a man who can openly display his emotions, admit his vulnerabilities and does not worry about the distinction between masculine and feminine behaviour.

The subject of masculinity also plays an important role in the fiction of British author Nick

Hornby. Many of his novels feature male characters in their thirties, who have a hard time figuring out what it means to be a man in the late twentieth and early twenty first century. Their ideas about manliness usually have an impact on their relationships with women. They expect certain things of themselves and their partners and they tend to let their relationships turn sour when these expectations do not get realised.

In this thesis I would like to analyse some of the changes in masculinity and the impact these changes have had on both men and women, with two of Hornby’s novels as my case studies. The novels that I have chosen were published fourteen years apart and illustrate how masculinity has changed in those years. As a feminist, I believe this change is a positive thing, but Hornby’s work gives a much more negative view and appears to promote a return to the old ideals of masculinity.

The first novel I will analyse is Hornby’s debut novel High Fidelity, published in 1995. It tells the story of Rob Fleming, a thirty-five year old, disgruntled record store owner who tracks down his former girlfriends in an attempt to find out why his latest partner, Laura, has left him for another man.

The second novel, Juliet, Naked, was published in 2009. Its two protagonists, Duncan Thompson and

Annie Platt, find their romantic relationship changed by the rerelease of a famous album by Duncan’s Walraven 3 favourite musician Tucker Crowe, an elusive singer-songwriter from the eighties. In my analysis of these two novels, I will explain Rob and Duncan’s opinions about masculinity. I will also look at their partner’s views on the subject. Laura and Annie’s different definitions of masculinity influence both their feelings for Rob and Duncan and their ideas about what kind of girlfriend or wife they want to be themselves.

In the first chapter of this thesis, I will explain the different ways in which masculinity has changed in recent years. Many of these changes are related to the capital a man should possess, not just his financial capital, but other sorts as well. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has written a famous essay about the different forms of capital. I will give a brief explanation of his theory and the relation between the forms of capital and masculinity. In the second chapter I will analyse the views of High Fidelity’s Rob and his girlfriend Laura. Rob has a very conservative idea of masculinity, while Laura’s views are more progressive. In the third chapter I will look at the views of Juliet,

Naked’s two protagonists, Duncan and Annie. They seem to be the reverse of Rob and Laura’s opinions. Duncan has a modern outlook, but Annie has a more traditional one. In my analysis of High

Fidelity and Juliet, Naked, I will pay special attention to narratological elements in the two novels that have considerable manipulative force. I believe that the choices Nick Hornby has made as regards the narration and focalisation of his work contribute to the message about masculinity that these novels are sending.

Chapter One: The Changes in Masculinity - The Traditional Man and the Modern Man

A term that is often used in debates about manliness is the crisis of masculinity. The crisis of masculinity seems to be an identity crisis. Before this crisis, men knew how to be masculine. In a modern society shaped by feminism and LGBTQ-rights, however, some men feel that it has become more difficult for them to assert their masculinity. Unlike the existence of other modern crises, such as the financial crisis or the refugee crisis, the existence of the masculinity crisis is hotly debated.

Literary scholar Aneta Stepien claims that “we need to stop talking about a masculinity crisis” while linguistics lecturer Roger Horrocks has devoted a whole book to “masculinity in crisis”. Walraven 4

Despite their disagreement on the existence of a crisis, both sides agree that the definition of masculinity is different from what it was before. Stepien acknowledges that men have to adjust to their “new gender role” and that they have to deal with a “new approach based on partnership and equality of men and women at home and in work”. Horrocks claims that “the old forms are disintegrating, while men struggle to establish new relations with women and with each other.”

Whether masculinity is in crisis or not, it has gone through some important changes. The modern real man is different from the traditional one. In this chapter I will discuss a traditional image of masculinity and the ways in which it has changed.

In his article “The Masculinity Crisis” editor of Psychology of Men and Masculinity Ronald F.

Levant claims that “the good provider role” is “the basic pattern by which men have traditionally fulfiled the code for masculine role behaviour” (222). Being the good provider means making enough money to ensure that one’s family always has clothes, food and a roof over its head. Traditionally, this role has belonged to men. It has always been their task to get a prestigious job with a good salary, while the women were supposed to stay home and run the household. Being the good provider is one the most important parts of traditional masculinity. This means that a real man also needs a certain type of wife or girlfriend, namely a woman who can cook, clean and fulfil other tasks related to the household. She can have a job outside the house, but not one that takes time away from her work at home. Her income cannot equal or top that of her husband.

Acquiring a high social status is another part of traditional masculinity. Bourdieu discusses this in

Masculine Domination: “a ‘real’ man is someone who feels the need to rise to the challenge of the opportunities available to him to increase his honour by pursuing glory and distinction in the public sphere” (51). The public sphere is the realm outside the home and family life. It is the realm of work, politics and the public debate. A real man needs to acquire glory and distinction in this sphere. He can do that by getting a prestigious job or becoming a public figure. This will show that he is special, that he can achieve something that other people cannot.

According to Bourdieu, a man cannot decide whether he wants to adhere to these standards of masculinity or prefers to ignore them. Being a real man is not a choice, but a duty. Bourdieu mentions Walraven 5

“the permanent tension and contention, sometimes verging on the absurd, imposed on every man by the duty to assert his manliness in all circumstances. [...] Manliness [...] is first and foremost a duty”

(50-51). There is a constant pressure on all men to be the good provider and to become a distinguished figure in the public sphere. When a man does not do these things, he is not considered someone who has made a different choice, but someone who has failed at his most important duty.

In recent years, some of these ideas about masculinity have changed. The belief that the man has to be the good provider has become less popular. Deborah Siegel describes this change in her article

“The New Trophy Wife”. She writes about the “new trend in the mating game - marrying someone like yourself” (52). A successful man with a high income is no longer expected to marry the stereotypical trophy wife - a beautiful, young woman with more social skills than academic skills.

Instead, Siegel, writes “eyebrows are raised when a guy marries a woman who doesn’t match him in education or professional status” (53). A man needs a wife who is on his level. She has to be able to provide for herself instead of relying on her husband to do it for her.

Another aspect that has changed is the pressure that is put on men to assert their manliness.

Although this pressure has not entirely disappeared, it does appear to have lessened. In 2016 market research firm YouGov conducted a survey about British masculinity. Participants were asked how they perceived their own masculinity and femininity. The results showed a large gap between older and younger men: On a scale of 0-6, where 0 is completely masculine and 6 is completely feminine, only 2% of young men (aged 18-24) define themselves as totally masculine, compared to fully 56% of men over 65. Even including the second highest level of masculinity, there’s a 56% gap between male

18-24s (18% at level 0 or 1) and over 65s (74%), and a 28% gap between 25-49s (46%) and over 65s

(Dahlgreen).

These results suggest that the pressure to establish one’s manliness has lessened. Younger men do not feel the same need to be completely masculine that older men feel. They majority of the men aged

18-24 placed themselves at level 2 or higher, implying that they might have certain qualities that are considered feminine instead of masculine.

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It should be noted that there was no objective measuring of the participants’ manliness. The men were asked to judge for themselves whether they are completely masculine or not. Therefore it is possible that even participants who have defined themselves as fully masculine might not fit the standards of masculinity that I described earlier. However, this can still indicate a lessening of the pressure that is put on men. Bourdieu wrote that a man has to assert his manliness under all circumstances . This implies that openly admitting that one might not be completely masculine is out of the question. Even a man who has failed to adhere to the standards of masculinity would have to pretend under all circumstances that he has succeeded, that he is as masculine as anyone can be. If someone were to ask him in a survey whether he was completely masculine or not, he would have to say that he was, even if that was not the case. The results of the research seem to suggest that younger men feel less pressure to assert their manliness than older men. They are more willing to admit that they might not fit the norms of masculinity. Whether the younger men are more willing to ignore the standards of masculinity or more willing to admit that they are unable to adhere to those standards, they do not seem to be under as much pressure as the older men to assert their manliness.

So what does this bring us, so far? The traditional real man has a prestigious job with a good salary. He is the sole breadwinner of the family and has a wife who takes care of the house and the children. He always makes it clear that he is a masculine man. The modern real man is married to someone who matches him. Both he and his partner have a distinguished career and together they provide and care for their family. Being completely masculine is no longer a duty to him. A real man is able to admit that he also has qualities that are usually considered feminine.

Gender and Forms of Capital

Both the traditional and the modern masculinity that I discussed in the previous paragraph require capital. A man who considers it his duty to be the breadwinner of his family needs to make enough money to fulfil that duty. A man with a more modern view on masculinity has to have both a good income himself and a partner with a high salary. Other forms of capital are necessary as well. In The

Forms of Capital Bourdieu distinguishes three different kinds of capital: economic, social and cultural Walraven 7 capital. Economic capital consists of money and other financial resources, such as real estate. Social capital refers to one’s social network. Cultural capital has to do with education and knowledge about culture. According to Bourdieu, cultural capital can exist in three different states: the embodied state, the objectified state and the institutionalised state. Bourdieu writes about this first state:

The accumulation of cultural capital in the embodied state, i.e., in the form of what is called

culture, cultivation, Bildung, presupposes a process of embodiment, incorporation, which,

insofar as it implies a labour of inculcation and assimilation, costs time, time which must be

invested personally by the investor (48).

The very term incorporation implies that this form of cultural capital is not an object one can own, but rather a state of mind or a certain knowledge. Embodied cultural capital has to be learned instead of bought. It is a knowledge of culture and an ability to appreciate it. A person who possesses embodied cultural capital knows how to read works of art, knows the hallmarks of certain genres or artists.

Objectified cultural capital, according to Bourdieu consists of “cultural goods (pictures, books, dictionaries, instruments, machines, etc.)” (47). Unlike embodied cultural capital, it is a physical form of capital. One can gain this capital by buying cultural objects. Finally, institutionalised cultural capital is one’s formal education, all the degrees and academic qualifications that a person has gained.

Now, Bourdieu has written extensively on gender, but this topic does not play a role in his theory on the forms of capital. However, I would argue that there is a relationship between the economic, social and cultural capital a man possesses and his masculinity. One needs certain amounts of these different forms of capital to be able to fit the standards of masculinity, both the traditional and the modern standards.

The aspects of traditional masculinity that I described in the previous paragraph imply that if a man wants to be a real man, he cannot have the same amount of economic capital as his wife or his girlfriend. If a man can only be a real man if he provides for his woman, he needs to have a larger amount of economic capital than she does. She has to depend on him financially. Therefore she Walraven 8 cannot have as much economic capital as her husband, let alone more. And although a real man is not absolutely required to have more social capital, there does seem to be a relation between social capital and the standards of traditional masculinity. Bourdieu says that a man needs to increase his honour in the public sphere. The woman’s honour, meanwhile, is an “essentially negative honour [which] can only be defended or lost, since her virtue is successively virginity and fidelity” (51). According to this definition, a woman’s honour exists in the private sphere. It is connected to marriage; she needs to remain pure for and faithful to her husband.

Marriage and family life belong to the private sphere. If a man wants to increase his honour, he has to play a role in the public sphere; if a woman wants to maintain her honour, she needs to focus on the private sphere. This means that a man is likely to have more social capital than his wife or girlfriend has. The man goes to work every day, while the woman stays at home takes care of their house and their children. Therefore, the man has more chances to meet new people and build up a large social network.

As said, Bourdieu divides cultural capital into three different sorts: institutionalised, embodied and objectified. Institutionalised cultural capital - a formal education, diplomas and degrees - is essential for a real man. He needs this type of cultural capital to get the prestigious job that he has to have.

Objectified and embodied cultural capital are less important. A man can provide for his family and achieve success in the public sphere without owning cultural objects or having an extensive knowledge of culture. However, these types of capital can add to a man’s status. A house filled with expensive works of art can show that a man has a lot of economic capital. Knowledge of culture suggests that a man is well educated.

The changes in masculinity that I described earlier have an impact on the relationship between capital and gender. If it is not necessary for the man to be the good provider, his economic capital does not have to be higher than that of his wife. Instead, they have roughly the same amount of economic capital. The same goes for social capital. If both the man and the woman work, they both enter the public sphere regularly and have the opportunity to build up a large social network. In this context Siegel writes that the “new trend in the mating game” (52) is a marriage between two people Walraven 9 who match each other in education. This means that the husband and the wife should have the same amount of institutionalised cultural capital.

Chapter Two: Saving Masculinity by Swapping Real Capital for Cultural Capital – Lad lit and the Crisis of Masculinity

As I have mentioned before, there is a belief that masculinity is currently in crisis. While the new image of the real man has been embraced by some men, others have been unable to let go of the old ideal of masculinity. They also feel that it has been made more difficult for them to fit that ideal. The most important reason for this belief is that women have entered the workforce. This means that two essential parts of traditional masculinity, namely providing for one’s family and getting a prestigious job, are now options for women as well. Not all men are comfortable with this fact. In his article

“Men or Mice: Is Masculinity in Crisis?” The Guardian journalist Ross Raisin discusses the project

Men’s Voices, a sound exhibition that consists of interviews with British men about masculinity. One of the men who participated in this project explained how he would feel if his wife became the provider of their family: “I think there’d be a lot of friction in the house, because my manliness would be gone… I would feel really angry at her, and at myself”. Many other men who were interviewed for the project expressed similar feelings. The crisis of masculinity seems to be a crisis of identity: now that women can achieve things that were previously considered essential parts of masculinity, men who still believe in the traditional image of the real man can have trouble asserting the manliness they see as an important aspect of their identity.

This crisis of masculinity has been an important topic in modern fiction, especially in literature. In the late twentieth century a new British literary genre came into being, one that revolved around the changes in masculinity and the trouble some men had with adjusting to these changes. This genre is called lad lit. In On Modern Fiction literary critic Elaine Showalter describes lad lit as “a masterly examination of male identity in contemporary Britain” (60). The protagonists of lad lit are British men in their twenties or thirties who are dealing with “the final maturation into manhood” (Martin 237).

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Many of them feel that this maturation is more difficult than it was in the past. Now that women can be providers and have careers, manhood is more difficult to achieve.

This is especially true in High Fidelity, the debut novel of Nick Hornby, one of the most important writers in the lad lit genre. The novel’s protagonist, Rob Fleming, still believes in the old standards of masculinity and finds it difficult to live up to these standards. His failure to become a traditional real man is made worse by the fact that his girlfriend has a high income and an important position at a renowned law firm. Rob is unhappy about this. Like the participants in the Men’s Voices project, he feels that his manliness depends on being a provider and having a distinguished career. Laura’s success and his own failure are signs that he is not a real man.

High Fidelity participates in the debate about the masculinity crisis by presenting a protagonist who worries about his masculinity. Rob believes that he has failed to mature into manhood, especially because he has a girlfriend with a career that is much more successful than his own. As a result, he becomes depressed. The novel thus seems to add to the belief that masculinity is in crisis. Rob’s unhappiness can be seen as a confirmation of men’s worries: a female provider does indeed lead to trouble in the relationship.

In this chapter I want to analyse the topic of masculinity in High Fidelity and the impact it has on the novel’s two most important characters, Rob and Laura. First I will analyse the narrative situation and the way in which it influences the reader’s perception of these two characters. Then I will explain

Rob’s views on masculinity and his failure to assert that masculinity. Finally I will look at Laura’s opinion about the topic and at how she treats Rob’s worries about his lack of manliness.

Telling Narratological Elements in High Fidelity

High Fidelity is the story of Rob Fleming, a thirty-five year old music enthusiast who just got dumped by his girlfriend Laura. In an attempt to discover why his romantic relationships keep failing, he contacts some of his former girlfriends and asks them where things went wrong. Meanwhile he tries to keep his old-fashioned record store afloat. As I explained in my introduction, High Fidelity includes two very different perceptions of masculinity: Rob’s conservative idea of the man as provider and Walraven 11

Laura’s more progressive notion. In this paragraph I would like to argue that some narratological elements of the novel support Rob’s views and reject those of Laura.

In her Introduction to the Theory of Narrative Mieke Bal distinguishes two types of narrator: the external narrator and the character-bound narrator. She describes the external narrator as follows:

“When in a text the narrator never refers explicitly to itself as a character, we speak of an external narrator” (21). The external narrator is not an actor in the story, but only a speaking agent who relates that story to the reader. The character-bound narrator, on the other hand, does appear in the story and interacts with the other characters. There are two different kinds of character-bound narrator. One of these is what Bal calls a witness, a character who is “not important from the point of view of action. It stands apart, observes the events, and relates the events the story according to its point of view” (27).

The other type of character-bound narrator is someone “whose intention it is to relate the events of her

[/his] own life in a story” (26). This type of narrator is the protagonist of the story.

High Fidelity has a character-bound narrator. Rob is a character in the novel. He interacts with the other characters and frequently refers to himself. He is not a witness to the events he relates, but an active participant in them. It is his story that he is telling, not that of one of the other characters. The decision to have Rob narrate his own life story has an impact on the focalisation in the novel. Bal defines focalisation as “the represented ‘colouring’ of the fabula [the events described in the story] by a specific agent of perception, the holder of the ‘point of view’” (18). The narrator is the one who speaks, but the focalizer is the one whose vision on the events that narrator is describing.

In the case of High Fidelity the narrator and the focalizer are often the same person. Rob narrates the events of the story and gives the reader his view on those events. The focalisation occasionally shifts to other characters, when Rob quotes one of them, but Rob is the main focalizer. Laura only focalises when she speaks. All her actions are related to the reader from the point of view of Rob. Rob is more often the subject of focalisation than the object, while Laura is usually the object. Even when she does become the subject, her focalisation is still embedded in that of Rob. He is the one who tells the reader what she has said.

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When looking at focalisation, it is important to discover not only who is focalising, but also what or whom is being focalised. Objects of focalisation can be divided into two groups. The first group, which Bal denotes as CF-p (character-bound focalisation, perceptible), is that of perceptible objects, such as spoken words or material objects. These things can be perceived by multiple characters. The second group, CF-np (character-bound focalisation, non-perceptible), consists of non-perceptible objects, such as feelings and thoughts. These objects only consist in the head of a certain character and “only those who have access to that character’s ‘inside’ can perceive anything” (156).

Rob, as a character-bound narrator and main focalizer, has the possibility to focalise both perceptible and non-perceptible objects. The reader is granted access to both his words and actions, and his inner thoughts. Laura’s focalisation is limited to what is perceptible. The reader never has the chance to look inside her head and has to rely on her words and Rob’s descriptions and interpretations of her actions to form an idea of how she feels about certain topics. The consequent distribution of the focalisation in High Fidelity and the objects that are being focalised have an important impact on the discussion of masculinity in the novel. Bal writes:

When in a conflict situation one character is allotted both CF-p and CF-np, and the other

exclusively CF-p, then the first character has the advantage as a party in the conflict. It can give

the reader insight into its feelings and thoughts, while the other character cannot communicate

anything. (156-157).

Although there is not only direct conflict between Rob and Laura themselves, they do hold conflicting notions of masculinity. Rob supports the traditional ideal of masculinity which I described earlier, while Laura believes in the new ideal. The conflict between these two different notions plays an important role in the narrative.

Rob’s focalisation, which is directed towards both perceptible and non-perceptible objects, gives the traditional ideal an advantage. The reader is able to look into the mind of someone who believes in this ideal and to see what drives this person. The mind of the supporter of the new ideal, Laura, Walraven 13 remains closed off to the reader. He or she never finds out directly what Laura thinks, but merely what she says or does. It is therefore more difficult to find out what she feels and what motivates her words and actions.

The narrative situation in High Fidelity thus appears to support the old image of masculinity. It gives the reader much more information about the thoughts and feelings of the character who defends this image than about the mind of the character who defends the new ideal. Let me look into this in more detail.

High Fidelity: Rob

The life of Rob, the protagonist of High Fidelity, revolves around music. He talks about it with everyone he knows, both men and women. His conversations with men, however, are very different from his conversations with women. When he discusses music with his male friends and colleagues, he makes it clear that he respects their judgment and that he considers them his equals. During his conversations with women, he frequently tells them that their tastes and opinions are wrong and that they do not understand music. This condescending view on women’s musical tastes is something that

Rob has acquired quite late in his life. There is a striking difference between his attitude towards his college girlfriend Charlie and Laura, the woman with whom he had a relationship when they were both in their mid-thirties.

In the first part of the novel, Rob discusses his relationship with Charlie: “When she talked, she said remarkably interesting things- about her course, about my course, about music, about films and books and politics” (15). In a later fragment, Rob goes to a concert of singer-songwriter Marie La

Salle, who performs a cover of Peter Frampton’s “Baby, I Love Your Way”. Rob recalls the time when that song was a hit: “I was at college, and Charlie and I used to roll our eyes and stick our fingers down our throats when somebody […] put it on the jukebox in the bar” (48). Rob seems to consider Charlie an equal, then, when it comes to music. He finds her opinions on the topic

“remarkably interesting”, which suggests that he is willing to listen to her or and even to learn

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Charlie, because he feels that the two of them have superior taste.

He has a very different attitude to the music taste of Laura. Not only does he dislike most of her favourite artists, he seems convinced that her bad taste is due to the fact that she is a woman. This becomes apparent during a car ride, when Laura has made a mixtape that Rob dislikes. Every time

Laura tries to talk about something other than music, Rob decides “ [to] return to fight possibly the bitterest of all the bitter battles between men and women” (200). He is appalled at her failure to distinguish between good and bad music: “See, this is the sort of moment where men just want to give up. Can you really not see the difference between ‘Bright Eyes’ and ‘Got To Get You Off My

Mind’?” (201). None of the comments Rob makes suggest that Laura as an individual has bad taste. It is, in his opinion, simply a characteristic inherent to women.

A few weeks after Rob and Laura have broken up, Laura comes by to pick up the things she had left at Rob’s flat. Rob has already sorted out her records, most of which he bought for her: “The

Nightfly by Donald Fagen, because she’d never heard it, and some blues compilation samplers I decided she ought to have […] and a couple of country things, in my vain attempt to change her mind about country.” (160). Laura refuses to take any of the records, claiming that they are all things Rob likes and that she doesn’t even know. “‘Who the hell’s Little Walter? Or Junior Wells? I don’t know these people. I...’ ‘OK, OK, I get the picture.’ ‘I’m sorry to go on about it, but, I don’t know, there’s a lesson in here, somewhere, and I want to make sure you get it’”. (161). Rob doesn’t get it: “If I ever have another relationship, I’ll buy her, whoever she is, stuff that she ought to like but doesn’t know about; that’s what new boyfriends are for” (161). Rob uses the words new boyfriend instead of new partner. In his opinion, it is only the man who has to share his favourite music with his partner. The woman is supposed to do nothing more than listen.

This change in Rob’s attitude towards women’s tastes in music seems to be a reaction to a certain change in his life, namely the diminishing of his chances to become a real man. Rob’s definition of a real man is very traditional: he believes that it is his duty to provide for his partner and to become a distinguished person in the public sphere. This becomes clear when he hosts an acoustic concert of a Walraven 15 local singer-songwriter in his shop. The concert draws a large crowd and Rob sells much more records that day than he usually does. When the concert is over, Rob reflects on how it made him feel: “I felt,

I felt, I felt, go on say it, more of a man, a feeling both shocking and comforting. Men don’t work in quiet, deserted side streets in Holloway: they work in the City or the West End [...] They work in places where other people work, and they have to fight to get there” (221).

Although Rob did not feel exactly like a man, he felt more of a man than usual. He believed that, on the day of the concert, his job came close to being the kind of work that a real man needs to do. In the next sentence, he explains what a real man’s job is: a job in the City or the West End and one that a man has to fight for. The City and the West End are the two most important business districts of

London. Renting office space in these neighbourhoods is more expensive than anywhere else in the

United Kingdom. Only financially successful companies can afford an office in one of these districts.

These are the kind of companies where Rob thinks a real man should work. They can afford to pay their employees large salaries. This enables those employees to provide for their families, which is one of the most important duties of a real man.

A job at such a company is not only a job that will guarantee a good income, it also one that people have to fight for, according to Rob. This means that by getting such a job, a man can fulfil another important part of his masculine duty, namely, gaining distinction in the public sphere. It proves that he is better than the other people who tried to get that same job. It shows that he is special and can achieve something that other people cannot.

Rob’s standards of masculinity are very traditional. He believes that he needs to provide for his partner and that he needs to have a distinguished career if he wants to be a real man. When he was dating Charlie, he was in college and he felt that he still had the potential to become a real man. He thought that would finish his education, get a well-paid, prestigious job and thus fulfil his masculine duty. By the time Rob meets Laura, his life has gone in a very different direction. He has dropped out of college and is now the owner of a record store attracts few customers and is on the verge of bankruptcy. He has little economic, social and institutionalised cultural capital. According to Rob’s traditional standards of masculinity, this means that he has failed in his duty. He makes barely enough Walraven 16 money to provide for himself, let alone Laura. He has not made a name for himself in the public sphere. His shop lies in a quiet street in Holloway and never seems to sell a lot of records.

Rob is extremely aware of this failure. He believes that he is inferior to other men and that he has wasted his life. He frequently compares himself to men he thinks are more successful than he is.

When a male customer of Rob’s age comes into the store, Rob looks at the man’s clothes and behaviour and draws a few conclusions:

…he’s got the sort of car keys that you jangle confidently, so he’s obviously got, like, a BMW or a

Batmobile or something flash, and he does work which requires a suit, and to my untutored eye it

looks like an expensive suit […] I think about it for ages afterwards, what I must look like to him

[…] I’m a bit smarter than usual today - I got my newish black denims on, as opposed to my

ancient blue ones, and I’m wearing a long-sleeved polo shirt thing that I actually went to the

trouble of ironing - but even so, I’m patently not a grown-up man in a grown-up job (129).

Rob sees the customer jangling his car keys and immediately assumes that the man owns an expensive car. If he can afford such a car, he must also be able to provide for his family. The man’s job requires him to wear a suit, which, in Rob’s opinion, must mean it is ‘a grown-up’ job, one of those prestigious jobs that a real man needs to have. Rob, on the other hand, can wear whatever he wants to wear to work. To him, this is a clear sign that his job is not as important as that of someone who needs to wear a suit.

After his analysis of the customer, Rob wonders what he himself must look like to the former. He seems to believe that he already has the answer. He does not actually ask the man what he thinks of him, but he does picture himself asking it. When he does this, he uses a rhetorical question instead of an open question: “There’s your change, there’s your record, now come on, be honest, you think I’m a waster, don’t you?” (129). Although the man has given no indication that he has spent any thoughts on Rob and his work, Rob fears that he looks down on him. This fear seems to have been caused by

Walraven 17

Rob’s own insecurity, rather than by anything the customer has said or done. Rob does not have a serious, high-paying job and is therefore, in his own opinion, not a real man.

Rob’s failure is made even worse by the fact that Laura has gained all the economic, social and institutionalised cultural capital that Rob was supposed to have. She is a lawyer with an above average income. She has multiple degrees and is about to become a partner at the law firm for which she works. Rob often worries about the difference between their situations. Every time Rob and Laura go out somewhere and Laura pays the bill, Rob makes a mention of it: “out for a curry, Laura paying”

(197), “Laura pays the cabbie” (81). Rob’s tendency to do this implies that he sees Laura paying as an unnatural situation. If he were paying the bill, it would not be worth mentioning, because the man is the one who is supposed to pay. Rob cannot afford to do this, however, and he is aware of it every time he is forced to let Laura pick up the bill.

After Rob and Laura have gotten back together, they have a conversation about Rob needing to sort out his life. For Laura, this means sorting out relationships and thinking about whether he wants to have children or not, but Rob immediately assumes she’s talking about his job: “‘You’ve lived half your life, but for all you’ve got to show for it you might as well be nineteen, and I’m not talking about money or property or furniture.’ […] ‘It’s easy for you to say that, isn’t it, Mzzzz Hot Shot City

Lawyer. It’s not my fault that the shop isn’t doing very well’” (203). Rob’s defensive words and his mocking description of Laura’s job suggest that he is insecure about the fact that she does important work and has a large income, while he can barely afford to pay rent on their flat and has a job that he does not take seriously.

This insecurity has a negative impact on his relationship with Laura. Although Rob knows his failure is his own fault, he tends to take it out on Laura. In their conversation about relationships and children, Rob tells Laura that she has changed since she left the legal aid firm for which she used to work and took a job at a City law firm. Laura agrees with him, but they both have different opinions about how she has changed: “‘You’re tougher.’ ‘More confident, maybe.’ ‘Harder.’ ‘Less neurotic.’”

(207). Laura believes the changes are positive. Rob thinks they are negative. He claims that the fact that she is not the same person she used to be is the reason that they have grown apart. He does not Walraven 18 want a partner who is tough and hard, because that does not fit with his ideas about masculinity and femininity. It is his task to take care of his partner, not the other way around. He is the one who is supposed to be tough and hard. Those are the qualities a man needs to get the kind of job he should have. The knowledge that it is Laura who has those qualities makes Rob feel ashamed of himself. He tries to convince himself that Laura’s new attitude is the reason for the friction between them, but he realises that it is really his failure at becoming a man.

Rob does a similar thing when he goes to the funeral of Laura’s father and talks to the family. “Jo is Laura’s sister, and I think she’s great. She’s like Laura to look at, but she hasn’t got the sharp suits, or the sharp tongue, or any of the A levels and degrees” (181). Rob’s explanation of why he thinks Jo is great suggests that there is something wrong with Laura. She looks like Laura, which is a good thing, but she does not have Laura’s education or some of the habits that Laura has. These habits are aspects that Rob dislikes about Laura.

The things that Laura has and Jo has not are all related to Laura’s job. The comment about the sharp suits and the sharp tongue recalls a remark Rob made earlier about Laura’s move from a legal aid firm to a City Law firm. He claimed that her work at the City law firm meant: “expensive suits

[...] and a previously unrevealed taste for weary sarcasm” (70). The A levels and degrees are part of

Laura’s institutionalised cultural capital, the capital she needed to get her job. Once again, Rob is complaining about Laura’s work. He thinks a job that requires degrees and sharp suits is not a proper job for a woman.

Rob’s insecurity about Laura’s career and his own failure to be a traditional real man appear to be the reasons for his condescending look on Laura’s musical taste and his claim that women need men to tell them what music they are supposed to like. His behaviour is a backlash to her success and his own failure. Such a backlash is not uncommon. In Pygmalion’s Chisel: For Women Who Are Never

Good Enough feminist Tracey Hallstead claims that women’s empowerment is often followed by a patriarchal retaliation. When women gain political or economic power, they will have to be kept down in different ways. Hallstead argues that the emergence of the flapper as the American feminine ideal of the 1920s was a result of women gaining the vote: Walraven 19

For instance, the women’s vote in 1920 was soon followed by the flapper image on advertising

posters and on the printed page. This svelte, boyish model of the liberated woman, cigarette holder

posed jauntily in her hand, pressured women to bind their breasts, smoke, and lose weight,

effectively desexualizing themselves and risking their health to reassure patriarchy that women

were not all that powerful (96).

The ideal woman did not have female curves, but a svelte, desexualised figure, essentially a childlike body. She did not look like a grown woman who had the power of seducing men. She appeared young and fragile, in need of male protection. She might have gained some political power, but she was still weak and could not do without a man.

Another example Hallstead mentions is British top model Twiggy, who “reasserted an ideal of feminine frailty just as the introduction of the birth control pill in 1965 was affording women economic and social power” (97). Twiggy was famous for her short, thin figure and her big eyes.

Once again, the ideal woman was childlike and fragile, someone who clearly needed a man to look after her. Important gains for women, Hallstead’s examples show, frequently lead to patriarchal backlashes.

In High Fidelity, such a backlash can be seen. When Rob begins to feel that he is not a real man and that his girlfriend has succeeded where he has failed, his attitude towards that girlfriend’s musical taste becomes condescending. He can no longer accept that she might want to listen to music he despises and tells himself that she is wrong and needs to be corrected. The reason that Rob uses music for his patriarchal retaliation is because it falls into the category of cultural capital, the one kind of capital of which Rob possesses a large amount. In his article “Love, Lists and Class in Nick Hornby’s

High Fidelity”, Barry Faulk writes that “Both Rob and his employees share the same cultural baggage and the same mode of organizing aesthetic products to sustain their identity and manhood; all of them assume that cultural superiority compensates for economic inferiority” (Faulk 166). Rob cannot sustain his manhood in the traditional way. His economic, social and institutionalised cultural capital

Walraven 20 are too small for that. He does, however, have a large amount of embodied and objectified cultural capital. He uses this capital to compensate for his failure to be a real man.

According to Rob’s traditional notion of masculinity, he needs to be a good provider and gain distinction in the public sphere. He is unable to do this in the traditional way. He barely makes enough money to provide for himself, let alone for Laura, and he does not have a prestigious job. Therefore, he has to find a way to use his cultural capital to provide for Laura and to gain distinction.

Rob’s solution to this problem is to convince himself that musical taste is a matter of morality.

Listening to the wrong music or enjoying music in the wrong way becomes a crime to him. He repeatedly tries to convince people of the importance of taste. During an argument with Laura he claims that British celebrity Kate Adie is an awful person, because she owns less than a hundred records. “‘And I’ll bet she was one of the people at parties who used to go “Woooh!” to the fade-out of Brown Sugar’. ‘There’s no greater crime than that, [...] is there?’ ‘The only thing that runs it close is singing along to the chorus of ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’ at the top of your voice” (159). Laura’s claim that there is no greater crime is sarcastic. She tries to hint to Rob that there are more important things than music. Rob, however, takes her remark seriously and explains the only crime that might be worse. It is only when Laura starts laughing at him that he decides to pretend that he was being sarcastic as well: “I wasn’t joking, to be honest, but if she thinks I’m funny, I’m prepared to act like I was”. (159). Laura then claims that she used to sing along to “Hi Ho Silver Lining”. Rob is shocked:

“The joking has stopped now, and I look at her appalled”. (159). Laura laughs again, making it clear to Rob that she was not serious, and then says “You must think I’m capable of anything”. (159). Laura realises that, in Rob’s opinion, someone who would sing along to “Hi Ho Silver Lining” is a bad person, capable of committing all sorts of crimes.

Likewise, when Rob hears a bad mixtape, his reaction to it is over the top. “How can you like Art

Garfunkel and Solomon Burke? It’s like saying you support the Israelis and the Palestinians” (200).

“This is the second Simply Red song on this tape. One’s unforgivable. Two’s a war crime” (202).

Solomon Burke was one of the founding fathers of soul music, while Art Garfunkel makes pop music.

Soul has the reputation of being authentic, of expressing emotions that the singer has truly felt. Pop is Walraven 21 considered a more commercial type of music. In Rob’s opinion, authentic music and commercial music are each other’s opposites. The former is art, the latter is ‘soulless’ (173). It is therefore impossible to like both. Rob even claims that that would be the same as supporting both sides in a conflict. He does not only feel that the two different sorts of music are each other’s opposites, he also pits them against each other. When it comes to music, there is a right side and a wrong side. Fans of

Art Garfunkel and his soulless music are on the wrong side. Fans of Solomon Burke are on the right side. When Rob complains about Simply Red, a group that, like Art Garfunkel, is a pop act and thus not allowed to feature on a good mixtape, he goes even further. Putting two Simply Red songs on a mixtape is a war crime. Once again, a person who listens to pop music is not someone whose taste differs from Rob’s taste, but a person who is wrong.

This notion that taste is a matter of morality, combined with the idea that women are inherently wrong about music, allows Rob to feel that he can still be the good provider. Instead of bringing home economic capital, he provides embodied cultural capital, which is much more important. His lessons about musical taste will make his partner a better person. This is his method of providing for her.

Being a good provider, however, is only a part of being a real man. Rob also feels that it is his duty to “pursue glory and distinction in the public sphere” (Bourdieu 51). He needs to have high status and to prove to the rest of the world that he is special. The usual way to do that would be by getting a distinguished job. Rob believes that, as a thirty-six year old record store owner without a degree, he is no longer able to do this. Therefore he turns again to his cultural capital.

As I explained before, Rob has turned musical taste into a moral issue. This has helped him convince himself that he can still provide for Laura, despite his lack of economic capital. He also uses his musical knowledge as compensation for his lack of status. This becomes clear when Rob goes to a dinner party organised by his ex-girlfriend Charlie. When he arrives, the others guests are having an animated discussion. They try to involve Rob in their conversation, but he feels that he does not have much to contribute: “For most of the evening, however, I sit there like a pudding, feeling like a child”

(151). He explains to the reader where that feeling comes from. There are big differences between

Walraven 22 himself and the other guests: “They finished college and I didn’t [...] they have smart jobs and I have a scruffy job, they are rich and I am poor” (151-152).

Rob believes he cannot contribute to the conversation, because he is inferior to Charlie’s other guests. They all have distinguished careers and he does not. Nick and Barney, the two other male guests, have fulfilled their masculine duty; they have achieved distinction and glory in the public sphere. Rob has not. However, he believes that he has more embodied cultural capital than the other guests. Near the end of the dinner, he looks at them and asks himself: “Could they tell me the original line-up of the Wailers? No. They probably couldn’t even tell me the lead singer’s name” (152). So, the other guests might have all the economic and social capital that Rob cannot get, but he is their superior when it comes to cultural capital, which, in Rob’s opinion, is the sort of capital that matters the most.

However, musical taste and knowledge by themselves are not enough to make Rob special. He also needs to be one of the few people who possesses such a large amount of embodied cultural capital. A few weeks after the dinner party, Rob goes to a pub where a friend of his, singer-songwriter Marie

LaSalle, is giving a concert. The pub seems to be only half-full. Rob decides that this is because “you need pretty good taste to see how great she is, I suppose, and most people haven’t got that” (215).

This remark might at first seem like a complaint about the bad taste of “most people”, but to Rob, the belief that the average person rather listens “soulless modern pop music” (173) than Marie LaSalle is a comfort rather than an annoyance. It means that he is an exception, the rare person who possesses enough embodied cultural capital to be able to appreciate the more challenging work of an artist like

Marie LaSalle. His comment about the lack of good taste of most people is actually a subtle boast about his own superiority. Although Rob loves Marie LaSalle’s music, he does not want her to become popular, because then he would lose that superiority.

The idea that liking little known music makes one superior also comes up during one Rob’s discussions with his colleagues Barry and Dick. The three of them are making lists of their favourite

Elvis Costello songs: “I go for ‘Alison’ [...] and a Merseybeat-style version of ‘Everyday I Write The

Book’ I’ve got on a bootleg-tape somewhere, the obscurity of the last cleverly counteracting the Walraven 23 obviousness of the first, I thought” (76). Rob’s love for ‘Alison’, one of Elvis Costello’s most popular songs, seems genuine. He puts on his list, even though he knows it is an obvious choice. The

Merseybeat version of ‘Everyday I Write the Book’, on the other hand, is a strategic choice. It gets a place on the list not so much because Rob likes it, but because it is obscure and will therefore compensate for his boring first choice. It is not good enough for Rob to like good music. His favourite songs have to be little known as well, because that means they can be used as status symbols and give

Rob the distinction he craves. He might not be special, because he has gotten an important job that other men could not get, but he has got much better taste than the average person.

Although Rob has found a way to use music to establish his masculinity, he does not appear to have fully convinced himself. Despite his oft-repeated claim that “what really matters is what you like, not what you are like” (90), he does not actually believe that his musical knowledge and taste make him a real man. Providing cultural capital, instead of economic capital, and gaining distinction by having great taste, instead of getting a career, is not good enough for him. He wants to be a real man in the usual way.

At Charlie’s dinner party, Rob realises that he envies the other guests, even though they might not be able to remember who the lead singer of the Wailers was: “Do I want some of what they’ve got?

You bet. I want their opinions, I want their money, I want their clothes, I want their ability to talk about dog’s names without any hint of embarrassment. I want to go back to 1979 and start all over again” (152). He seems willing to give up his superior taste and knowledge in exchange for the things he believes will truly make him a real man: economic, social and institutionalised cultural capital.

With respect to this, Bourdieu wrote that “manliness is first and foremost a duty” (50-51). Rob knows that he has failed at this duty. He may provide Laura with cultural capital, but he is aware that she could survive without it, while he would have gone bankrupt if Laura had not lent him five thousand pounds a few years ago. His taste may distinguish him, but it does so in the private rather than the public sphere. Even though he has tried to assert his manliness by using his cultural capital, he eventually realises: “I’m going to have to do something about the shop - let it go, burn it down,

Walraven 24 whatever - and find myself a career” (221). Rob still believes in the old image of masculinity and will therefore not be happy with his life until he has fulfilled his duty of being a man.

After having considered Rob in particular, let me now look at the ways in which the I-narrator depicts Laura.

High Fidelity: Laura

As may have become clear, Rob’s view on masculinity is very traditional. He believes that he needs to gain distinction in the public sphere, provide for his partner and assert his masculinity under all circumstances. His failure to do this depresses him and makes him feel he is not a real man. It also leads him to feel insecure about his relationship with his girlfriend Laura, a lawyer at a large City law firm. Laura herself seems to have a very different view on masculinity. To her it is not important whether Rob succeeds at being a traditional real man or not, though she realises it does matter to Rob.

Therefore, she tries both to convince Rob that masculinity is not that important and to make him feel that he is more of a man than he thinks he is. She wants him to replace his traditional standards of masculinity with modern ones, but if that does not happen, she wants to make him believe that he has adhered to those old standards, in his own way.

Although Rob feels that he needs to be the one with the largest income, Laura does not mind that she earns more than Rob and is therefore usually the one who pays when they go out together. She makes this clear during a discussion about the question of where they want to spend their summer.

Laura suggests they go to some exotic location. When Rob protests that he cannot afford such a trip,

Laura says: “You know I’ll pay for you. Even though you still owe me money. What’s the point of me doing this job if I have to spend my holiday in a tent on the Isle of Wight?” (205). Laura’s comment that Rob knows she will pay for him suggests that to her it is already the status quo that she is the provider in their relationship. It does not matter to her that Rob does not make a lot of money, because she can pay for both of them. She explains a few minutes later what it is about Rob’s work that she does find important: “It doesn’t matter, you know, about the money. I don’t care how little you earn.

I’d like you to be happier in your work, but beyond that you can do what you like” (206). So, Laura Walraven 25 not only tells Rob that she wants him to be happier in his work, she also actively tries to make him appreciate his job more. She does her best to show him that, even if his job does not give him the economic and social capital that he thinks he needs, it might still be work worth doing.

At Laura’s request, Rob has made a list of his five dream jobs. Most of the jobs on the list are no real options. Rob wants to be a music journalist in the 1970s or an Atlantic Records producer in the

1960s. Only the fifth job, architect, is a possibility. When they discuss the list, Laura discovers that

Rob does not really want to be an architect. He could only think of four jobs, but he thought that would make a feeble list. Architect ended up at number five, because Rob thought he was good at technical drawing and because he felt that, like the other jobs, it would make him enough money to provide for Laura and gain him a certain status. It is, in Rob’s opinion, a real man’s job, unlike being the owner of a record store.

After Laura has pointed out that the first four jobs on Rob’s list are no options and that the fifth one is a job he does not care for, she tells him that the best thing for him to do would be to stay at his shop: “‘Wouldn’t you rather do that than be an architect?’ ‘I suppose.’ ‘Well, there you are then. It comes in at number five in your list of dream jobs, and as the other four are entirely impractical, you’re better off where you are” (223). By telling Rob that owner of a record store is on his list of dream jobs, Laura tries to give him a sense of accomplishment. She makes him look at his work in a different way. It might not make him a lot of money, but it is a job that he loves to do. Laura wants to convince Rob that this just as much an achievement as getting a high-paying, renowned job, if not more so. In short, the discussion of Rob’s list illustrates Laura’s view on masculinity. She thinks

Rob’s traditional outlook is making him miserable and believes he would be much happier if would be able to let go of the constant pressure to assert his manliness.

Laura also tries to convince Rob to let go of his notions about the kind of partner he should have.

He thinks he should be the provider and therefore should have a girlfriend who takes care of their home and any children they might have. The focus of her life should be her family and her home.

Laura disagrees with him. Shortly after she has gotten back together with Rob she tells him:

Walraven 26

I just want you to see that I’m not entirely defined by relationship with you. I want you to see that

just because we’re getting sorted out, it doesn’t mean that I’m getting sorted out. I’ve got other

doubts and worries and ambitions [...] I’m simply pointing out that what happens to us isn’t the

whole story. That I continue to exist even when we’re not together. (205).

Laura’s remarks do not fit with the old standards of masculinity. If the man is supposed to be the provider, the woman’s main focus should be her home and family. For Laura, those things are only a part of her life. The other doubts and worries and ambitions she mentioned are related to her work, which is as important to her as her relationship with Rob is. Laura also often admits that she does not have certain qualities that are considered inherent to women. When Rob’s mother wonders what

Rob’s flat would look like if Laura were not around, Laura tells her “He’s much tidier than me” (226).

According to the old standards of masculinity, cleaning up the house is the woman’s task, so Laura should be much better at it than Rob.

Despite her attempts to convince Rob that traditional masculinity is unimportant and makes him unhappy, Laura realises she cannot change his mind that easily. It is a long-term project that will require a lot of time and effort. Laura is willing to undertake this project, but she also tries to find a more immediate solution for Rob’s despair at failing to become a real man. As I explained before,

Rob uses his cultural capital to try to make up for his failure to be a real man. He convinces himself that he can provide for Laura by giving her the right records and telling her what music she should like. Laura seems to understand what Rob is doing and, to a certain extent, she goes along with it.

During their argument about Laura’s mixtape, Rob asks Laura how she can like both Art

Garfunkel and Solomon Burke. She replies: “Who says I like Solomon Burke anyway?” (200). After

Rob explains to her that Solomon Burke is the person who sang ‘Got To Get You Off My Mind’, the song that led to Rob and Laura’s first meeting, Laura says that she can understand why Rob chooses

Solomon Burke over Art Garfunkel. “And if I was asked to say which of the two was better, I’d go for

Solomon every time. He’s authentic, and black, and legendary, and all that sort of thing” (201).

Walraven 27

None of the words Laura uses to describe Solomon Burke say anything about his music. Authentic music is generally considered music that is made for the sake of art, as opposed to music that is produced only to make money. It is a label that can be applied to genres as diverse as folk, rock, soul and jazz and that does not give any indication of how the music sounds. Although there are certain genres that are considered black music, such as jazz and soul, the term “black musician” is not very clear and, like the word authentic, can be applied to various artists. The word legendary says more about Solomon Burke’s reputation than his actual work.

Laura’s description gives the impression that she does not actually know much about Solomon

Burke. This is confirmed later when she refers to him as “that man we had the argument about.

Solomon somebody” (237). She seems to prefer Art Garfunkel, saying that one of his songs has a

“pretty tune” (201), a description more specific than the one she gave of Solomon Burke’s music. Art

Garfunkel is someone she remembers, someone whose song she put on her mixtape. She only remembered Solomon Burke, because Rob talked about him. A few days after their argument, she cannot even recall his last name. The only reason Laura claims that, if asked to choose, she would go for Solomon Burke appears to be that Rob tells her he is a better musician than Art Garfunkel. She would rather listen to Garfunkel’s ‘Bright Eyes’ than to Burke’s ‘Got to Get You off My Mind’, but

Rob is the authority on the subject of music. If he says that Solomon Burke is the better artist, she believes him.

Laura’s belief in Rob’s superior taste does not seem to be genuine. It is an act for Rob’s benefit.

When Laura tells Rob that she would choose Solomon Burke, she is telling him that, of course, he is the one who knows best when it comes to music. He is the expert and his judgment is always right.

Laura makes it look like she accepts Rob’s image of her as someone who is completely ignorant of which musicians are acceptable and which ones are not. This is not because she believes Rob is right, but because she knows how important it is to Rob that he is somehow her superior and that there is at least one kind of capital of which he possesses more than she does. Music does not matter to her as much as it does to Rob, so it is not a problem for her to play the role of an amateur, if that will help make Rob feel that he is still a real man. Walraven 28

Laura is willing to compromise when it comes to Rob’s ideas about masculinity. She tries to change his ideas when they revolve around something that she finds important, such as his job or his expectation of her, but when his ideas are connected to topics that do matter much to her, such as music, she goes along with them to make him feel better.

Now, so far in my dealing with Laura, she appeared to be a character of her own. Yet, obviously, she only appears through the filter, of projection, of the I-narrator.

Conclusion

Rob Fleming, the protagonist of High Fidelity, believes in the traditional image of the real man. He wants to be the good provider and to have a prestigious career. In his romantic relationship, he needs to be the one who has the highest amount of economic, social and institutionalised cultural capital. He also feels it is his duty to assert his masculinity all the time. Rob has failed to achieve all these things.

In an effort to compensate for this failure, he attaches great importance to embodied cultural capital, specifically music. He tells himself that women are inherently incapable of judging music and that they need a man to do it for them.

Laura disagrees with Rob’s notions of manliness. She cares more about whether or not Rob is happy with his work than about the amount of money he earns at his store. She also makes it clear to him that there is more going on in her life than just her relationship with him. In spite of this, she tries her best to give Rob the idea that he has succeeded at becoming a real man. She realises that he will not easily let go of his ideas about masculinity. Therefore she pretends to believe his theory about women and their inferior taste in music.

The story of High Fidelity can be read as a confirmation of a certain fear about masculinity, namely the fear that, now that women have more options to work and earn money, men might have more trouble establishing their masculinity and will therefore be unhappy. Rob has failed to become the good provider and to get a distinguished job. This is bad enough by itself, but what makes it worse is that his girlfriend has succeeded at these traditionally masculine tasks. The difference in their situations leads to a lot of bitterness on Rob’s side. Walraven 29

Chapter Three: Saving Masculinity by Fabricating Female Support - Female Support for

Traditional Gender Roles

In chapter 1 I discussed how the standards of masculinity have changed. The modern real man is someone who shares the task of providing for the family with his partner and does not feel the need to be fully masculine at all times. While this image of masculinity has been accepted by many women, it has also led to a backlash. In recent years, more and more women have claimed that they prefer men who fit the old image of masculinity to those who embody the new ideal. Blog posts and articles about the unattractiveness of the weak modern man and the wish to return to traditional gender roles frequently appear online. Research into modern views on masculinity and femininity showed that the number of young people who agree with the statement “It is much better for everyone involved if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and family” has grown in the last decade. (Cotter & Peppin) British newspaper The Daily Telegraph reports that one in four

British women think that it is the man’s task to provide for his family and the woman’s job to take care of her home and family.

One of the greatest detractors of the modern standards of masculinity is the social media movement called “Women against Feminism,”, which began in 2013 and is still active on Twitter and

Facebook today. The women against feminism post pictures of themselves holding signs which explain why they are against modern feminism. Cathy Young, who analysed the movement for the

Boston Globe, wrote that one of the reasons for women to join this movement was “traditionalist views such as support for distinct sex roles, chivalry, or full-time motherhood”. Oana Crusmac, author of the article “Social Representation of Feminism within the Online Movement “Women Against

Feminism”, also found that the belief that “feminism destroys traditional gender roles” (23) was an important factor in the success of the Women Against Feminism. She mentioned a woman who complained that feminism “tries to feminize men” (15). Other women in the movement stated that they were against feminism, because they liked “being a housewife” or because they felt attracted to

“masculine men, like Christian Grey”.

Walraven 30

The complaint that feminism tries to feminise men implies that there is such a thing as masculine behaviour and feminine behaviour and that it is wrong for a man to display feminine traits. The other reasons for being against feminism suggest a preference for traditional gender roles as well. A housewife does not have a paying job. Therefore, she needs her husband to be the good provider.

Christian Grey, the male protagonist from the popular novel series 50 Shades of Grey, embodies the old ideal of masculinity; he has more than enough economic capital to provide for his partner and he has made a name for himself in the public sphere. Although not all the women who have joined the

Women Against Feminism are against the changes in masculinity, a desire to reverse these changes and bring back traditional gender roles does play a large role in the popularity of the movement.

Female support for traditional gender roles can be found outside the Women Against Feminism group as well. A number of women who describe themselves as feminist claim that they prefer doing housework and letting their husband provide for them to pursuing a career. They write blogs and op- eds explaining their choices, stating: “I love my traditional role as housewife as much as my husband loves his traditional role as the provider” (Siegel), “I settled into a traditional gender role and I feel liberated” (Brady). Although these women believe that everyone should have the option to step out of traditional gender roles if they choose, they still support those roles.

The popularity of the Women Against Feminism movement and the support for traditional gender roles show that there is a group of women who dislike the ways in which masculinity has changed.

They prefer a man who asserts his masculinity at all times and who will provide for them, so that they can stay home and take care of their household and their children.

In this context, Nick Hornby’s 2009 novel Juliet, Naked is an interesting object for analysis. It features two characters, Duncan and Annie, whose different views on masculinity have a negative impact on their relationship. Duncan has a modern view. He does not worry about establishing his manliness and would rather do boring, familiar work at his hometown than try to find a new and more distinguished job elsewhere. His girlfriend Annie is not happy about this. She would prefer to date a man who is more traditionally masculine and to settle into the traditionally feminine role herself.

Duncan and Annie’s conflicting wishes eventually lead to the end of their relationship. Annie then Walraven 31 falls in love with Tucker Crowe, an American rock star from the eighties who, at least in Annie’s opinion, is more of a traditional man.

Like High Fidelity, Juliet, Naked participates in the debate about masculinity. However, it approaches the topic in a different way. High Fidelity is set in the nineties and features a male protagonist who had trouble adjusting to modern masculinity. The story of Juliet, Naked takes places almost fifteen years later and presents two protagonists: a man who has accepted the new image of the real man and a woman who begins to realise that she would be happier with a traditional real man.

While High Fidelity appeared to confirm the idea that a female provider would make men miserable,

Juliet, Naked can be read as a confirmation of the belief that, now that men have become more adjusted to the new masculinity, women feel that they would be happier in a relationship with traditional gender roles.

In this chapter, I will analyse Duncan’s masculinity and Annie’s opinion of it. First I will analyse pivotal narratological elements of the novel. After that I will explain how Duncan fits the standards of modern masculinity. Then I will discuss Annie’s traditionalist view on gender roles and how it influences her relationships with Duncan and Tucker.

Telling Narratological Elements of Juliet, Naked

In Juliet, Naked, British couple Annie and Duncan travel to North-America for a special pilgrimage.

They plan to visit every place that has played a role in the career of Tucker Crowe, an obscure singer- songwriter who has walked out of a concert in 1986 and has not been heard from since. Duncan, a self-styled ‘Crowologist’, considers the trip one of the most important events of his life. Annie, on the other hand, begins to feel that Duncan’s love for Tucker Crowe might be getting a bit out of hand.

This feeling intensifies when an demo version of Tucker Crowe’s most successful album, ‘Juliet’, is released. Duncan considers the new album, called “Juliet, Naked”, a masterpiece. Annie thinks it’s inferior to the original. When Annie posts a review of the album on the Tucker Crowe fan site Duncan has created, she gets a reply from Tucker himself. As Annie and Tucker become friends, Duncan begins an affair with a new colleague of his. Walraven 32

The narratological elements of Juliet, Naked are very different from those in High Fidelity.

However, they give an advantage to the same conservative ideal of masculinity that the narratology of

High Fidelity supported. The novel has an external narrator who, in the first part of the story, distributes focalisation over two different characters: Duncan and Annie. Duncan is an example of the modern man, while Annie supports the old standards of masculinity. The narrator allows Duncan to the subject of focalisation as often as Annie. It seems that focalisation is distributed more equally between supporters of the traditional ideal of masculinity and supporters of the new ideal. However,

Juliet, Naked has a third main focalizer, namely Tucker Crowe. Although I will not analyse Tucker’s views on masculinity in detail, it is clear that he is a supporter of the old standards. He describes how the success of his latest album made him feel “like a man, bringing home the bacon to his family”

(66). After his six year-old son Jackson has gotten upset, because Tucker told him he was going away on a trip to England, Tucker realises that “he had a child who needed him and loved him and felt anxious when he went out [...] and Tucker felt unmanned by it. Fathers weren’t supposed to engender this level of dependency. They were supposed to miss bedtimes because of business trips and concert tours” (150). Tucker clearly believes in traditional gender roles: the man works hard to provide for the family, the woman takes care of the children. The old ideal masculinity thus gets an advantage in this novel, not because the supporter of the new ideal seldom focalises, as in High Fidelity, but because that supporter is outnumbered. Duncan is the only one of the three main focalizers who has a modern view on masculinity. Annie and Tucker are still very traditional.

The narratological elements of Juliet, Naked also supports the old masculinity in another way, namely by using Annie’s focalisation to take away her subjectivity. Or, so I want to argue, the very fact that Annie, unlike Laura, is allowed to be the subject of focalisation means that she will become less of a subject than the male focalizers, Duncan and Tucker.

The topic of subjects and who is and who is not allowed to be one has been much discussed in philosophy. According to feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray women have been denied subjectivity throughout history. In her article ‘Equality: Notes on the Thought of Luce Irigaray’ law scholar

Yvette Russell discusses Irigaray’s thoughts about “the negation of specific female bodies in history Walraven 33 and their replacement with masculine constructions of the feminine, such as those of wife and mother.

Women’s bodies are thus materialised insofar as they serve the male world” (Russell). These masculine constructions of the feminine bring to mind traditional gender roles: the housewife who

“serves the male world” by cooking, cleaning and caring for the children, so that her husband is free to pursue a distinguished career. Her tasks revolve fully around serving someone else, while the man can focus more on himself. He does have the duty to provide for his family, but his work also gives him a chance to “pursue glory and distinction in the public sphere” (Bourdieu 51). This glory and distinction are primarily for his own benefit. According to Irigaray, this means that “woman functions only as object for and between men” (Russell). She cannot be a subject, because she exists to serve someone else.

This image of woman as object appears in Juliet, Naked in Annie’s focalisation. Most of her thoughts and feelings revolve around the men in her life. Her deepest desire appears to be to serve the male world as a wife and mother. When she meets Tucker Crowe, she realises that “there was nothing she wanted more than to nurse Tucker back to health in Gooleness” (174). When she tells

Tucker and his son, who have been staying at her house for a few days, that she has washed their clothes, that remark “seemed like the first tiny glimmers of a rebirth” (231). She has no desire to do anything for herself, only to improve the life of the man she loves.

The reader discovers this tendency of Annie to think of herself as “an object for and between men”

(Russell) because she is one of the main focalizers. She seldom expresses these feelings openly. They are only revealed because she is allotted focalisation of both perceptible and non-perceptible objects.

So, once again, the most important female character in the novel does not fully become a subject. In

High Fidelity Laura is more often the object than the subject of focalisation. When she does become the subject, her focalisation is embedded in Rob’s. In Juliet, Naked, Annie becomes the subject of focalisation quite often, but that focalisation reveals that she considers herself more of an object.

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Juliet, Naked: Duncan

While High Fidelity’s Rob still believed in the traditional notions of what it means to be a real man,

Duncan has a more modern view. He does feel the need to be special, but he does not consider it his masculine duty to fulfil the role of the good provider. He wants a woman who matches him, someone who has the same economic, social and cultural capital as he has. Romantic relationships, he believes, are similar to jigsaw pieces; only pieces that belong to the same image are right for each other: “If one were to imagine, for the sake of argument, that jigsaw pieces had thoughts and feelings, then it was possible to imagine them saying [...] ‘You’re a bit of telephone box, and I’m the face of Mary, Queen of Scots. We just wouldn’t look right together’” (73). Duncan believes that he can only date someone that belongs to the same picture. Unlike Rob, he does not want to provide for his girlfriend or to have a job that is much more prestigious than hers. He wants Annie to have as much capital as he does.

Although Duncan does not feel the need to provide for Annie, he does feel the need to “pursue glory and distinction”. He considers this an important part of masculinity. However, he has not succeeded. He has a job the at art department of the local school, “teaching trainee plumbers and future hotel receptionists how to watch American television” (Hornby 36). He dislikes both the work and his colleagues, all of whom he considers “uncultured bores” (74). He makes enough money to live on, but not much more than that; according to Annie, the trip to the United States has left him broke. He lives in Gooleness, a town that he feels is unsophisticated and that has nothing more to offer than “a cold, grey sea, [...], bingo halls and [...] shivering pensioners” (75).

This failure to achieve distinction and glory has a clear cause. Duncan has an extreme aversion to change and trying out new things. After his short-lived affair with fellow Tucker Crowe admirer Gina,

Duncan tries to convince Annie to take him back. He tells her why he thinks it was a mistake to leave her for Gina: “Well, I knew you. Know you. That seems to me important. More important than I’d realized. [...] I’m just not cut out for this sort of change, Annie. I want to live here. With you” (117).

Duncan does not want to get back together with Annie because he loves her, but because she is someone familiar. He has lived with her before and knows her character and habits. He prefers going

Walraven 35 back to the person he already knows to making the effort of getting to know someone else. Annie is the safe, familiar option, Gina the new, frightening one.

Even dealing with smaller changes is a challenge for Duncan. During his vacation in America,

Duncan gets nervous when Annie announces that she wants to go shopping in San Francisco instead of going to Berkeley with Duncan. Annie is always the one who knows where to go, but now Duncan has to find the way to Berkeley all by himself. This is an unpleasant experience for him, though he feels proud when he arrives: “Getting to North Berkeley station felt like an achievement in itself, and he allowed himself the luxury of asking for directions to Edith Street as a reward. ” (11). Duncan seems to have a tendency to panic whenever he needs to do something that is not part of his daily routine. When he manages to accomplish his task, he is quite impressed with himself.

This inability to cope with change appears to be the main reason for Duncan’s uneventful life.

Getting the kind of prestigious job that a real man should have most likely involves moving to a bigger town, meeting new people and other big changes. Duncan cannot handle such changes.

Therefore he stays in Gooleness and continues to teach. Although he often complains about his boring job and his unsophisticated hometown, it seems that he does not really want to move or look for other work. He is happy with his uneventful life.

However, it is not the life of a real man. His solution to this problem is the same as Rob’s. He uses his embodied cultural capital. He realises that he will never have the sort of career that will make him special, so he decides to become special in a different way, namely by showing that he knows much more about music than anyone else. When Annie discusses soul music with two music fans and is told that Motown music is ‘too famous’, she is reminded of Duncan: “There was the same need for obscurity, the same suspicion that if a piece of music had reached a large number of people, it had somehow been drained of its worth” (133). To Duncan, only music that has not reached worldwide popularity is acceptable. Listening to the same music that the majority of people listens to makes him feel that he is just like everyone else.

Although Duncan likes to have his favourite albums on his computer, he dislikes “the track- naming part [...] He couldn’t help imagining, when he inserted a CD into his laptop, that whoever it Walraven 36 was in cyberspace monitoring his musical tastes thought them dull, and a little too mainstream” (26).

Whenever the computer does not recognise the music and Duncan has to fill out the names of the songs by himself, he gets happy, because he feels that he is “well off the trodden paths and into the musical jungle” (26). Duncan likes to be one of the few people, or even the only person, who knows certain musicians. His idea of gaining distinction is making sure he knows everything there is to know about musicians that other people have not even heard of. In this way he is similar to Rob; they both use their embodied and objectified cultural capital to compensate for their lack of other forms of capital. Owning thousands of records and knowing all kinds of music trivia is their way of establishing their masculinity.

As I mentioned before, Duncan feels that a real man should not only be special, but should also have a girlfriend or wife who possesses roughly the same amount of capital as he does. When it comes to economic and social capital, Annie is indeed Duncan’s equal. Neither of them have prestigious or high-paying jobs; Duncan works at the local school, Annie at the local museum. Their social network is not very extensive: most of their friends seem to be people they met in high school or college. They do not appear to have many friends in Gooleness. However, to Duncan it is especially important that

Annie is his equal when it comes to embodied cultural capital. This is the kind of capital that makes him special. As his partner, Annie should be just as special.

Although Annie knows less about music than Duncan does, her appreciation of his favourite artist

Tucker Crowe makes Duncan believe she enough embodied cultural capital to be able to judge art in the right way. He takes her opinions on the subject seriously and is always interested in them: “He wanted to hear what she had to say, too. [...] He valued her insights into Crowe’s work” (28). This changes when Juliet, Naked, the demo version of Tucker Crowe’s most successful album, Juliet, is released. It is the first Tucker Crowe record in decades. Duncan gets a copy of it in the mail, but, not knowing what it is, he leaves the package on his desk. Annie finds it and decides to listen to the album. She realises that this is a special event: “She’d heard the music, even before he had, which meant that for the first time ever she’d formed an opinion about it that hadn’t been filtered through his

Walraven 37 own intimidating evangelism” (35). The word evangelism implies that Duncan considers it his mission to share the work of Tucker Crowe with Annie and to make her love it as much as he does.

Annie finds his attitude intimidating. She has the feeling that Duncan would not accept it if she had an opinion about Crowe’s music that Duncan disagreed with. This turns out to be true when Duncan and Annie discuss Juliet, Naked after they have both listened to it. Annie describes the album as dreary and a piece of shit. Duncan tells her that he is disappointed in her and that her opinion of the album indicates that there is something wrong with her:

‘If you can’t hear anything in this…’ ‘What? Please tell me. I’d love to know what that

would say about me.’ ‘The usual stuff.’ ‘Which is what?’ ‘Which is, I don’t know. You’re a

moron.’ ‘Thanks.’ ‘I didn’t say you were a moron. I said you were a moron if you can’t hear

anything in this.’ ‘I can’t.’ (30).

Duncan feels extremely upset about what he considers Annie’s inability to recognise the greatness of Juliet, Naked. Although he was initially shocked that she decided to listen to the album before he had a chance to do so, he eventually decided that it did not matter and that he liked to see her form an opinion of the album without his help: “He’d had a chance to watch her have to come to her own conclusions, and she’d messed it up” (41). Juliet, Naked is the first Tucker Crowe album that Annie has heard before Duncan. This has led Duncan to use the album as a way of testing Annie. He had gotten the chance to see if Annie has gained the amount of embodied cultural capital that, as Duncan’s girlfriend, she is required to have. When he discovers that she has not got it, he is astonished and disappointed. He believed that she was his equal, a partner who matched him. Now that he has found out that is not the case, he believes he needs a new girlfriend.

The night after Duncan and Annie’s argument about Juliet, Naked, Duncan has a drink with his new colleague Gina. Afterwards, they go to her house and listen to both Juliet, Naked and its original version, dubbed Clothed by fans:

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Gina vaguely remembered Tucker Crowe, but she was happy to be educated. The day after their

drink, Duncan played her Naked and Clothed, back to back, on her iPod dock in her small and

heartbreakingly under-furnished one-bedroom flat [...], and they went to bed together shortly

afterwards, when she’d said exactly the right things about the rawness and unadorned simplicity of

Naked (77).

The fact that Duncan played Gina the two albums and asked for her opinion before they went to bed together suggests that, if Gina had not said exactly the right things, Duncan would not have wanted to sleep with her. Once again, he uses Juliet, Naked to test a woman. He needs to be sure that Gina has enough cultural capital to be his equal. If not, he has to find a different partner. After his discovery about Annie’s failure to appreciate Tucker Crowe, he does not want to risk wasting time on a woman who turns out to have that same lack of taste.

Although Duncan has a more modern view of masculinity then Rob does, they both use their embodied cultural capital to try to compensate for their lack of other forms of capital and to assert their manliness. Duncan convinces himself that his musical taste makes him special and feels that his partner should be his equal and therefore have the same taste. However, while Rob eventually decides that cultural capital is not enough to make one a real man, Duncan never feels the pressure to become more masculine. In the course of the story, Duncan even begins to care less about masculinity than he did at first. During a discussion with a friend about Tucker Crowe, Duncan admits that his interpretation of Crowe’s lyrics might not be the correct one. His superior musical taste and knowledge are the things he believes make him special, but now he accepts the possibility that other people might have even more knowledge and better taste.

Duncan also chooses to come back to Annie, who failed to appreciate Juliet, Naked, instead of staying with Gina, who said exactly the right things about the album. He prefers being with someone he knows, even if she has bad taste, to being with someone new, even though she has the right amount of cultural capital. Duncan’s behaviour fits his modern image of the real man, then. One aspect of masculinity that has changed is the constant pressure to assert that masculinity. Being a masculine Walraven 39 man is no longer a duty and having qualities that are considered feminine is no longer something to be ashamed of. While Rob still felt “the permanent tension and contention, sometimes verging on the absurd, imposed on every man by the duty to assert his manliness in all circumstances” (Bourdieu 50) feels that he has the freedom to be as masculine or as feminine as he wants to be.

Juliet, Naked: Annie

While Duncan eventually chooses to return to his old girlfriend Annie, Annie herself decides that she does not want him back. She realises that she never cared much for him even when they were still together. At the beginning of the novel she described her feelings for Duncan as “the faint, conditional affection she could scrape together for Duncan every now and again” (7). When Duncan tells her about his affair with Gina, Annie is not sad about the end of their relationship, but only angry that she is not the one who ended it. She feels that she “should have got out ages ago” (83), but now Duncan has beaten her to it. The cause of Annie’s feelings of dissatisfaction is the difference between her views on masculinity and those of Duncan. As I mentioned before, Duncan has a modern view.

Annie’s opinion about masculinity is more traditional. This becomes clear when she breaks up with

Duncan and meets his idol Tucker Crowe. She becomes aware of the enormous differences between the two men and begins to believe that Tucker fits her ideal image of masculinity much more than

Duncan ever has.

Annie visits her therapist Malcolm shortly after her break up with Duncan. Malcolm asks her what kind of man she is looking for now. Annie does not tell Malcolm about Tucker, but she realises that the man she describes to him is Tucker. When she is finished, Malcolm draws a conclusion that surprises Annie. “‘I know who you’re describing.’ ‘Really?’ ‘The opposite.’ ‘The opposite of what?’

‘Of Duncan.’ [...] It was the second time recently that Malcolm had made an observation that could, presumably wrongly, be described as perceptive” (141). Annie thinks about Malcolm’s words and wonders if she has indeed fallen in love with Tucker because he is the opposite of Duncan. She compares the two men and concludes that the most important difference between them is that

“Duncan [...] hadn’t lived, not even a little” (141), while Tucker, in Annie’s opinion, has. Although Walraven 40

Annie does not elaborate on what she means by living, her definition of the term seems to be living the life of a traditional real man. Annie believes that Tucker has done this and that Duncan has not.

An important part of traditional masculinity is gaining a job that is both well paid and distinguished. Duncan’s job is teaching media classes at the local college, which Annie does not find good enough. After an argument with Duncan she wonders “Why was he teaching trainee plumbers and future hotel receptionists how to watch American television, if he was so smart?” (36). Annie’s rhetorical question makes it clear what she thinks of Duncan’s job. Either he is as smart as he thinks he is and he does a job that is below him or he is not smart enough to do a real man’s job. Tucker, on the other hand, has “toured America and Europe” (141) and has made a widely renowned album that

Annie thinks is “brilliant” (201). Although he has not written any new music in a long time, Annie still considers him a rock star. This is a job that she thinks is good enough for a real man.

Annie’s opinion on the manliness of Duncan and Tucker influences the way she thinks about their families. When Annie finally meets Tucker, he tells her that he does not have a good relationship with four of his five children and that his ex-partners are the ones who take care of them. He expects her to judge him for this, but Annie reacts differently. “Annie tried to get her face to register the disapproval he seemed to be expecting, and then gave up” (176). She then tells Tucker that people “end up doing things they’re good at” (176) and if Tucker’s ex-wives and former girlfriends are better at caring for their children than Tucker is, then Tucker can’t be expected to share the task with them. When Annie thinks about this further, she realises that she would have felt very differently if it had been Duncan who neglected his children:

…she allowed herself to imagine that Duncan had a daughter from a previous relationship, and she

was the one who had ended up speaking to the child’s mother while he scratched his balls and

listened to his Tucker Crowe bootlegs. Is that the view she would have taken in those

circumstances? Almost certainly not. (176).

Walraven 41

Tucker is a real man, in Annie’s opinion. It is his job to work and his partner’s job to take care of the children. It does not matter if he is not very good at raising children, because that is more of woman’s task anyway. When Annie does express some disapproval later on, she regrets it immediately, takes it back and asks herself “what was the point of becoming attracted to a rock star if she wanted him to behave like a librarian?” (195). Although Annie feels that “losing touch with daughters [...] was, on the face of it, an unattractive habit” (176) it does not make her like Tucker any less. She seems to believe that a man with a real job cannot be expected to devote as much time and attention to his children as he does to his work.

Duncan is a different matter. His job falls into the librarian category. It is, according to Annie, a mundane job and it only pays a low salary, which means that Duncan has not fulfilled his masculine duty. Annie feels that such a man, if he does not try to get a better job, should at least pay more attention to his children, because his work is not as demanding as a real job. If he has enough time to

“scratch his balls and listen to his Tucker Crowe bootlegs” he can also afford to spend some time on his children.

Annie’s conservative view of masculinity shapes not only her image of the ideal partner, but also her ideas about how important romantic relationships are to men and how important they are to women. Although she criticises Duncan for not having lived, she knows that that criticism applies to herself as well. At the end of her Tucker Crowe pilgrimage with Duncan, she has “started to wonder whether her whole life had been a waste of time” (20). Upon further reflection, she decides that she has not wasted her whole life, but only the fifteen years she spent with Duncan. She feels that she has not lived during those fifteen years. However, in Annie’s opinion, her not living means something different than Duncan’s not living. Duncan was supposed to live a life similar to the one she believes

Tucker has lived. He should have earned a lot of money and have made a name for himself. His life has been a waste of time, because he has not done any of those things. For Annie, things are different.

She does not regret having a mundane, low-paying job that she does not enjoy doing, she regrets never having had a satisfying relationship and not being a mother. This becomes clear after Annie’s breakup with Duncan. She tries to work out a formula with which she can calculate how many years Walraven 42 of her life she has wasted. She has stayed with Duncan for fifteen years, but she hopes that she can find something that will compensate for some of that time. She discovers that this is not an easy thing to do, because “one of the traps she kept falling into - and she couldn’t help it, even though she was aware of it - was to equate time with Duncan as time generally” (124).

The fact that Annie equates time with her partner with time in general implies that she considers her partner more important than other people or things in her life. If she has spent fifteen years with a man she did not really love, those years were a waste of time, no matter what else she might have done during that time. Even when she changes her formula and includes her work, her family and friends, culture and some other things on which she spent time in the equation, she separates them from Duncan. Work, family and the other things are grouped together, while Duncan gets a category of his own, one that is a larger part of the equation than the category that includes her work and her family. Her romantic relationship is still the most important thing in her life. This is not the case for

Duncan and Tucker. Annie feels that Duncan has wasted his life on a boring and unimportant job, while she thinks that Tucker has spent his time much better, even though he has told her that his romantic relationships were not much happier than her relationship with Duncan has been. This fits with traditional gender roles. A man is a real man if he can get a good job. A woman’s most important task is to find a good man and be a good partner to him.

Annie’s definition of a good man and the ways in which she wants to be a good partner to him fits with her ideas about masculinity. She wants a man who will provide for her so that she can care for him and for any children they might have. This desire for a relationship with traditional gender roles shows up early in the novel. Before Annie meets Tucker Crowe, she has listened a lot to his most famous album, “Juliet”. One of her favourite songs on the album is ‘You and Your Perfect Life’, written after Tucker’s breakup with British top model Julie Beatty. Annie thinks about the impact the song must have had on Julie’s life. “She felt sorry for Julie, who’d had to deal with men like Duncan throwing stones at her windows, metaphorically and probably literally, every now and again, ever since the song was released. But she envied her, too. Who wouldn’t want to make a man that passionate, that unhappy, that inspired?” (10). Walraven 43

Annie envies Julie because she has played the role of muse to Tucker’s master. This is a role that

Annie would like to play herself. She does not seem to have any interest in the role of master.

Although Annie claims that what Julie has done is “the next best thing” (11), if you can’t write songs yourself, she never says that she envies Tucker because of his songwriting abilities. She considers both the role of the master and the role of the muse as difficult for her to achieve, but it is only the role of the muse that she wants to have.

Annie’s wish to be a muse suggests a desire for traditional gender roles. Gender plays an important role in the trope of the master and the muse. The distinction between the two roles is often also a distinction between male and female: the master is generally a man and his muse a woman. In her article ‘Reclaiming the Muse’ Penny Murray discussed the popular image of the muse. She claims that “the image of the Muse as loved object who inspires the male artist, whilst she herself remains silent, is deeply engrained in contemporary culture” (Murray 327). This image has certain implications: “man creates, woman inspires; man is the maker, woman the vehicle of male fantasy”

(327). The master’s task is to work, while it is the muse’s job to help him with his work. There is a similarity to traditional gender roles: the woman takes care of the household, so that the man can devote his time and attention to work. Both the muse and the housewife fulfil tasks that will make the work of their men easier. The muse inspires, the housewife cooks and cleans. The role of the muse can be seen as a romanticised and more glamorous version of the role of the housewife. Likewise,

Annie’s desire to be a muse can be seen as a wish to fulfil a more traditionally feminine role in her romantic relationship.

Annie eventually decides to change her life. This happens in the final chapter of the novel. Annie has curated an exhibition at the local museum. At the opening of the exhibition, she meets Kath, an old woman who says that she has not done much in her life. Annie tries to comfort her “You can never go wrong not doing something. It’s only when you do things that you get into trouble” (236).

Kath then tells Annie: “But now what? [...] I’m seventy-seven and I never got into any trouble. So now what? Have you got a medal for me? You’re a museum director. Write to the Queen and tell her.

Otherwise it was all a bloody waste of time, wasn’t it?” (236). This conversation is a turning point for Walraven 44

Annie. Kath’s comments echo Annie’s thoughts about having wasted fifteen years with Duncan.

Annie feels that she has only a little time left to make something of her life. “Her youth was over, but there might be some life left in life yet” (239). After her conversation with Kath, Annie decides to pursue a relationship with Tucker. She sleeps with him, in the hopes of getting pregnant, and eventually confesses to her therapist Malcolm that she considers following Tucker to the United

States.

All the big changes that Annie tries to make to improve her life are related to finding a traditionally masculine partner and fulfilling a traditionally feminine role in her relationship with him.

While Laura had doubts and ambitions related to both her work and her family, Annie’s doubts and ambitions revolve exclusively around romantic relationships and children. She does not like her job as curator of the local museum, but she never even considers trying to find a different one. She feels that her therapy sessions with Malcolm are not helpful, but she never claims that they are a waste of time.

It is only the lack of a happy relationship with a masculine man that makes her truly unhappy and gives her the feeling that she has wasted years of her life.

Conclusion

Duncan’s image of the real man is more modern than that of High Fidelity’s Rob. He wants a girlfriend who can provide for herself and has a career similar to his. This means that she needs to possess as much economic, social and cultural capital as he has. Asserting his masculinity is not as important to Duncan as it is to Rob. He feels that he can as masculine or as feminine as he wants to be. His girlfriend Annie is not happy about this. She wants a partner who is a real man in the traditional sense. She would also like to play a more traditionally feminine role in her relationship.

When she meets former rock star Tucker Crowe, she feels attracted to him because she sees him as a much more masculine man than Duncan.

Once again, a certain fear about the changing image of masculinity has come true for one of

Hornby’s protagonists. This time it is the fear that women will be unhappy in their romantic relationships, because they prefer a traditionally masculine man and old gender roles. In High Walraven 45

Fidelity, Rob and Laura’s relationship turned sour because of Rob’s worries about his failure to establish his masculinity in a traditional way. In Juliet, Naked Annie becomes frustrated with

Duncan’s inability to behave in a masculine manner.

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Chapter Four: The Fear of Change and the Play with Focalisation

Masculinity has gone through many changes in the last few decades. Men are no longer expected to be the sole providers of their family. Instead, they share the task of providing with their wives. The pressure to assert one’s manliness at all times has lessened. Men are more free to admit that they do not always feel fully masculine. This changed idea of masculinity means that there has also been a change in the amount of the different sorts of capital men and women should possess. The old standards of masculinity meant that a man had to have more economic, social and institutionalised cultural capital than his partner. According to the new standards, a man and a woman should possess roughly the same amounts of these sorts of capital.

The changes in masculinity play an important role in the fiction of Nick Hornby. His 1995 novel

High Fidelity shows a protagonist who is still clinging to the old standards of masculinity, while his more progressive girlfriend tries to convince him to let them go. Juliet, Naked, published in 2009, presents a man who has succeeded in letting go of those standards, to the disappointment of his conservative girlfriend.

There is an interesting difference between the male characters’ views on the subject of masculinity and the opinions of the female characters. When it comes to the men, there is a step forward, from

Rob, who believes in the old ideal of masculinity to Duncan, who prefers the new one. When it comes to the women, Hornby’s novels take a step back. Laura, the woman in the older work, has a modern view on masculinity, while Annie, the female protagonist of the more recent novel is more traditional.

The focalisation in both High Fidelity and Juliet, Naked sides with the supporters of the traditional image of masculinity. It does so in two ways. First of all, focalisation in the two novels is unequally distributed between the supporters of the old image of masculinity and the supporters of the modern image. In High Fidelity, Rob, as the protagonist and character-bound narrator, is the main focalizer.

He believes in the old standards of masculinity as do Annie and Tucker in Juliet, Naked. Duncan is the only character who both supports the new ideal and focalises quite often. Secondly, the only female character who is more often the subject of focalisation than the object, has a tendency to define herself through the men in her life and thus becomes more of an object. Walraven 47

Both novels are related to certain fears about masculinity. In High Fidelity, it is the fear that women will take over men’s work and that men will then be unable to establish their masculinity. In

Juliet, Naked it is the fear that, now that the ideals of masculinity seem to have been accepted by many men, women will become unhappy in their relationships. Hornby lets those fears come true for his protagonists. Rob is indeed deeply miserable about his unsatisfactory job and his girlfriend’s successful career. Annie feels that she has wasted precious time on Duncan and wishes that she had chosen a more masculine partner.

The central relationships in both works turn bitter because of the absence of traditional masculinity, either because it is the man who prefers this form of masculinity or the woman. The focalisation in both works supports the traditional form. This combination of the embittered relationships and the focalisation implies a plea to return to traditional masculinity. The reader is presented with a conflict about the old form of masculinity and a new one and is encouraged to side with the supporters of the old one. In other words: there is no notable difference between the two works as regards the form of masculinity they support.

Although the modern form of masculinity has become more generally accepted in the years between the publication of High Fidelity and the publication of Juliet, Naked, the view on this topic has remained traditional. Hornby uses different fears - first the older fear that men will lose their manliness, then the newer one that women will become unhappy - to support the same form of masculinity. In this context, High Fidelity and Juliet, Naked strongly suggest that it would be best for both men and women if modern society returned to traditional gender roles: the man as the provider and career-maker, the woman as caretaker and housewife. As I mentioned in my introduction, I disagree with this idea. I see the current view on masculinity as progress, because it leaves both men and women a choice and does not limit their options. Therefore I consider the views on masculinity in

Hornby’s novels a destructive one and I find that the views proposed through them detract from two otherwise enjoyable novels.

Walraven 48

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